Bucking the national trend: Home prices in N.S. expected to keep increasing

Nova Scotia’s housing market blew up during the pandemic. In 2020 and 2021, house prices and sales spiked. Things are cooling down now but the market is still holding strong.

“The 2022 market I would say normalized quite a bit from 2020-2021 markets. Those markets were anomalies,” said Roger Boutilier, CEO of the Nova Scotia Association of Realtors (NSAR).

During the peak in 2021, houses were on the market just days before being sold. Statistically, in a typical market, houses sit on the market for 60 to 100 days. In 2019, pre-pandemic, the average was about 65 days; right now it’s 33 to 34 days.

The cooling of the market can also been seen in the number of sales, which are down about 20 per cent compared with last year, but up two per cent from 2019.

“The markets in 2020 and 2021 were totally unsustainable,” Boutilier said. “It was unrealistic to think that market was going to continue so it had nowhere to go but down.”

2:17 Nova Scotia housing prices an election issue

What’s not going down, though, is price, and that’s bucking the national trend.

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With a rise in interest rates, housing markets have cooled across the country. This summer the Canadian Real Estate Association reported that Canadian home prices were down 23 per cent since the start of the year, and Re/Max Canada’s 2023 housing outlook is predicting prices to fall next year.

In some Ontario cities, prices are predicted to drop 10 to 15 per cent depending on the location, with British Columbia cities expecting to see prices go down between five and 10 per cent.

But Nova Scotia is one of two provinces where prices are expected to keep increasing.

According to data from NSAR, the average residential price in Nova Scotia is now $385,756. Halifax and Dartmouth remains the most expensive area of the province, with the average house price now topping half a million dollars.

As of the end of October, the average residential price in Halifax and Dartmouth was $417,503, up nearly 40 per cent from 2020, when the average price was around $367,000.

“Nova Scotia homes were undervalued for decades,” said Boutilier.

“It wasn’t just the pandemic, there was a valuation correction so you’re not going to see prices go down. I think we’ve set a new benchmark and you’re not going to see the benchmark come down.”